


pull the trigger (don't think don't think)

by Serpents_Cradle



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Not Beta Read, Russian Mafia, Suicidal Thoughts, This is heavy stuff, more like incoherent rambling, please heed the warnings, totally not an excuse for me to project onto Joseph Kavinsky more than I already do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 15:05:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serpents_Cradle/pseuds/Serpents_Cradle
Summary: His father had taught him very little worth remembering, looking back, but this was certainly one of them: never let your guard down. He clutched his knees close, barely ten years old, trying in vain to block out the sounds of his mother wailing pleas, or the clinking of an expensive belt buckle against skin.(He supposed the man he had become would not hesitate to wrap a hand around a pistol andbang)(A Joseph Kavinsky Character Study)





	pull the trigger (don't think don't think)

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND WARNINGS
> 
> this fic includes:  
> Child Abuse  
> Implied Sexual Assault  
> General Angst  
> Suicidal thoughts
> 
> IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED OR OTHERWISE MADE UNCOMFORTABLE BY ANY OF THESE TOPICS, THIS IS NOT THE FIC FOR YOU.

_(He couldn't help but wonder if somehow, against all natural judgement, he had had more in common with the boy than he thought.)_

It had started out simply enough, a cold winter in the middle of Targovishte that had born down on them too hard. Joseph Mikhailov had sat quietly with his back to the wall, curled up in the dark of the night chasing away his nightmares.

His father had taught him very little worth remembering, looking back, but this was certainly one of them: never let your guard down. He clutched his knees close, barely ten years old, trying in vain to block out the sounds of his mother wailing pleas, or the clinking of an expensive belt buckle against skin.

_(He supposed the man he had become would not hesitate to wrap a hand around a pistol and_

_bang)_

The problems came after that, as if they had ever the room to begin. His mother grew quiet, pensive, uncaring. She turned to the drugs the boy's father dreamed to keep her from leaving, rendering her merely a shell of the loving woman she had once been.

Lio Mikhailov was not the kind of man who would bother with broken toys. He was the son of a rich man, who himself was the son of a rich man, and they learned at a young age it was easier to start over than to waste time repairing what had been broken.

And so, when Anya had ceased to be interesting to him any longer, he did not hesitate to leave her out for the Wolves.

_(Wolves bite at your heels until they are no longer hungry, and then they will tear your carcass apart. They have no mercy.)_

Joseph had been only twelve when he had first seen the monster that wore the skin of a patriarch head on. The hands of a man who had been twentyfold bathed in blood were well equipped for this means, more so than caring. It had always been easier to tear one another down.

The bruises hid well under a school uniform, concealed under windbreakers and rough leather bangles. No one ought to know, and so they didn't.

At fourteen, he had made the simple mistake of showing his cards to the dealer, the undoubtable royal flush held in pale, bony hands already stained with golden nicotine. It had taken only one slip in his concentration, a slip of the collar when he first kissed a boy against the side of the boys’ home. His face had crinkled in disgust, pressing warm olive fingers to a perfect ring of cigarette burns along his collarbone. 

It hadn't taken long, then, for all hell to break loose — he was pinned into the corner beneath his father's form, gagged on lies and worse until the tears fell from more than sadness. He learned a lesson, that night, one he would not soon forget: to show your cards is to fold with aces in your hand.

_(A secret, after all, is only a secret until it is no longer kept.)_

At fifteen, he dreamed; curling his fingers around freedom, love, acceptance, anything to ease the pain, but it was for naught. He could only curl them around the stacks of notes, press them under his mattress and weep. 

He slept on a dirty mattress in a shed just outside Sofia, now, a runaway for a year with barely enough to get by. It was there he found his first Pack, Sasha and Nikita and a boy the other two only called blondinka, blonde girl, runaway from the Russian crown and fugitive all the same. He spoke no Bulgarian, only a bastardized Slavic dialect, but it did not stop him from learning. He claimed he had no name, that he had been born from the ice and warmed on hot coals, but there was a softness and a defiance in his eyes that caught the young Mikhailov at first glance. 

Blondinka said he dreamt of America, of running away from his father and his past, starting a new life there and carving out a home of his own. It was a sentiment that Joseph could not agree with more. They set off, bid their pack goodbye, deigned to find a new future. 

Destiny is overrated, Joey, he had said, clutching to the boy's side as he drank long swigs from a flask. His eyes were bright under the Bulgarian moon.

Days after his uncelebrated sixteenth birthday, Joseph left the only marker of his stay with the boy in a metal door near a landfill in Sofia, the day before their journey to their new life.

_(Ilyusha Prokopenko and Joseph Kavinsky. Dream Pack.)_

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is pumpkin-parrish.tumblr.com, feedback is always appreciated!


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